Chapter 1
Yennefer’s mother used to send her to the market at the end of the harvest turn to buy grains and cheeses. The traveling merchants and peddlers had little left by then and often felt compelled to ask a lower price when faced with Yennefer’s bulging jaw and pleading eyes. They thought her a beggar, and truth be told, they weren’t far off the mark. They took little from her and pressed wilted foods into her hands as if it would assuage the guilt they felt for shuddering at the sight of her.
Most of her trips to the market, Yennefer spent in the shadows, setting to her tasks as quickly as she was able with her head down and her feet as sure as they could be. She would return home with her goods and the lingering sounds of people chatting and laughing, an image of a young couple kissing or holding hands among a crowd, and a chest hot with envy. A head full of questions. One such day, she asked her mother why some people had happiness and others did not. A withering sigh had answered.
“Happiness is a fool’s desire, Yennefer.” Her mother’s dark eyes never wavering from the stew she stirred. “Naught more than a patch sewn over a tear, that. A ridiculous frill. Food in your belly and a roof over your head—those are the only wants you need set your mind to.”
Frills, pretty as they were, weren’t meant for girls as unpretty as Yennefer.
Six days only had passed after that night, six days before Tissaia arrived. She radiated elegance and power so awesome that it seemed to warp the air around them as she approached the farm and haggled for Yennefer’s soul. She paid less for a girl than for a sickly market sow, and Yennefer had never felt uglier in her life nor more incapable of happiness, more absent of care.
She often thought of Tissaia’s eyes that day, the first day. They’d held little more in them than striking color, and Yennefer distinctly recalled the chill such guardedness forced down her spine. Over decades, the memory turned from agonizing to absent, only flitting through her mind on occasion like a lost bird, but now, the images dragged. Yennefer saw every second as if the scene had been frozen around her. That Tissaia, foreign and rigid and sublime, seemed so far from the one who had laughed with her over ale. The one who had taken her by the shoulders, the pads of her fingers digging in, and bid her to stay in the tower. She was lifetimes from the woman who had cupped Yennefer’s cheek and turned her into a legend.
Gods, why was she thinking of Tissaia at all?
“Yennefer?”
Oh. Right. Tissaia’s voice wailed through the eerie, silent haze again, and Yennefer jerked with awareness. A groan scratched through her throat as the world set sharply in. “Tissaia?” Her voice was nothing but a bloody whisper barely worth the energy used to expel it. She tried to lift her head, but the smoky sky spun and swam, and she crashed back down again. The ground was hard and unyielding beneath her. Reality, even harder.
“Yennefer?!”
Tissaia’s voice was desperate now, screaming to its limit. Wasn’t it? Was she imagining that? Yennefer had never heard Tissaia sound so terrified before, so powerless. No, she was sure Tissaia de Vries had never once been powerless in all her long life, so how could she sound so? In Yennefer’s mind, the woman had exited the womb fully formed in high collar and sneer, catching lightning in bottles while other children caught only fireflies. No, Yennefer’s brain had to have made such madness. She was dying after all.
She could feel it now, clarity seeping through shock. She was dying, and slowly at that. There was blood, a lot of blood. It was wet against her gut, smearing between dress and skin. Yennefer bit down and braced herself to lift her head again, just enough to look down at the branch impaling her. She could barely see it, just a blurry painting of shapes and colors she could only distinguish with context. Her eyes hurt so badly that she could hardly bear to have them open, so she lay her head back down and shut them. She could not recall stumbling or barreling down the hill, only the fire in her hands and the air going red, then white, then black, but she must have, for when she woke again, she was in the charred and burning woods, torn open about a tree.
Gods, she couldn’t even die without torture. Truly, had she been such a blight on the world? Surely, this exceeded whatever ill karma she’d incurred over her life. Had she not just saved the wretched day? Had she saved the day? Was anyone else alive? Did she kill everyone?
“Yennefer!”
Tissaia. Tissaia was alive.
Like an enchantment, her shout triggered a flutter of echoes through Yennefer’s head. Tissaia’s voice. Tissaia’s face, cycling the range of subtlety. Their history rushed into her mind like a rolling tide, the only connection in her life, even strained as it often was, that had ever lasted. Tissaia. The only person who still managed to stir those places in Yennefer that she had long tried to kill. Deep and wild as they were, they refused to be snuffed and woke every so often, and ached to be valued and worse, loved. After decades, she still wasn’t certain Tissaia valued her, even less that she loved her. Something had always existed between them, but it had never had a name. It never even had an acknowledgment. She couldn’t have defined it even if asked. No category she considered had ever seemed to fit.
“Yennefer!”
She tried to sit up again and failed, tried to get her hands under herself for leverage but felt no response. She couldn’t feel her hands. Hot, painful tears spilled into her eyes as she realized she wasn’t sure they were even there anymore. Burnt beyond recognition or use. Melted off the bone like too-tender meat.
Fuck. The thought made her sick. Her head spun. The sky, too. The Continent, the Cosmos, all were spinning, and Yennefer could do nothing but hurt and hallucinate and hope she wouldn’t be sucked away in the vortex.
“Yennefer?! Yennef—Here! She’s here!”
“Hm?” Yennefer’s brow dipped. A muscle somewhere twitched. A shot of pain jumped through her gut as she felt someone’s knees collide with the ground at her side and knock heavily into her. The jostling was agony, but then a face floated into her vision like something torn from another hazy dream. Another murky memory.
Yennefer smiled, bloody and delirious, as she made out the blurry form. “Tissaia,” she said, or believed she did. But maybe there had been no sound. Maybe there had only been quiet realization.
Tissaia’s gloved hands caught Yennefer’s face in a furious grip. “I’m here,” she croaked, voice raw and nearly gone. Had that really been Tissaia shouting her name all this time? Had Yennefer not hallucinated any of it? “Look at me now. Look at me, love. Look at me.”
Love? Is this what it felt like? No. Of course not. How could something she’d never known feel so terribly familiar?
“Yennefer, focus!” Tissaia commanded, terror clear in the sharpness of her tone. It must be bad. “I cannot access my Chaos.”
Yennefer frowned and dragged in a breath. “You?” she asked, voice gurgling as her throat bloodied again. The sky overhead blinked to nothing, and Yennefer felt herself drift. It flickered back on, gray and marred by the shape of a woman. “You are Chaos.”
A shadow waved over Yennefer’s face and back, then again. “Can you see?”
“Hurts,” Yennefer whispered and closed her eyes again.
“Then focus on my voice.” Tissaia’s next breath rattled, but her command was firm. “You need to draw upon my Chaos stores. You can mitigate the damage until a healer arrives. They’re on the way.”
“Hands.”
“Don’t think about your hands right now,” Tissaia urged. “We can heal them. Focus on what I’m telling you.”
“Your hands.”
“What about them? Yennefer, please, I know you are tired. I know you are in pain. But I need you to focus. If you do not try this now, you will die.”
“Do you even have what it takes?” Clearly not.
Tissaia’s blurry face doubled. Tripled. All three leaned in. Yennefer felt her then. Their foreheads pressed together, and their noses bumped, Tissaia’s bloody and Yennefer’s blackened and cold.
“I can hardly feel your life force,” Tissaia said, and there was a small catch in her voice, a wobble Yennefer had never heard there before. “Even without my Chaos, I would know you. The air bends for your every breath and always has done.” Her voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. “I cannot bear your stillness, Yennefer. You must try. You must.”
Yennefer sighed, and it felt dangerous, as if she would never recover the air it cost her. “Take your gloves off.”
Tissaia sat back, leaving a cold ache behind. “What?”
As feared, Yennefer had to claw for her next breath. “Gloves.”
Mercifully, Tissaia spared her further repetition and did as she bade. Yennefer heard the shuffle of material, then the plop of leather against the ground. “There. They’re off.”
Yennefer opened her eyes and tried to find Tissaia’s gaze in the murk. She could only find the shape of her. “Touch me again.” Tissaia’s petite hands were warm and sweaty, and her fingers shook around Yennefer’s cheeks as if she had commanded them to summon earthquakes. She felt so close to something like home. “I don’t hate you.”
A harsh breath hit Yennefer’s face, and Tissaia’s sweaty fingers gripped hard around her jaw. “We need to move quickly now,” she said. “Call on my reserves before we lose our chance.”
“Tiss—Tissaia—”
The air turned liquid in Yennefer’s lungs. She gurgled and choked until Tissaia suddenly shoved her on her side, pried her mouth open with her fingers, and scooped out a handful of blood just as Yennefer hacked it up.
“Yennefer, stop wasting time and do as I have instructed!”
There was no use, whether or not she had it in her to try. Yennefer knew as much. She was certain Tissaia did as well. But this, she needed to say. This, she needed to make known before these last embers of her burned out and all that she had ever been faded into nothing. “I don’t—”
“Hate me,” Tissaia all but barked as she rolled her onto her back again. “Yes, I heard you the first time. Now, may we tend to the business of saving your life? Revelations of our mutual non-hatred can wait. Yennefer, open your eyes this instant! I demand it!”
Yennefer’s anguish, at its peak only moments before, whittled itself to calm in her next shoddy breath. As sharply as it had started, her pain silenced itself like a finished song, and the most wonderful relief washed through her. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Yes, it does!” A furious growl erupted from Tissaia’s throat as she latched onto Yennefer’s cheeks again. “It does hurt, Yennefer.” She could feel Tissaia’s nails making moons along the backs of her jaw, but there was no pain, only pleasant, waning pressure. “It is agony.” Her voice was a wet, rolling whisper as she slid the cold tip of her nose along Yennefer’s hairline and temple until her mouth hovered just over her ear. “Piglet, please. This peace is a lie.”
Fuck. How she had hated that name as a girl, had never felt more accomplished than she did the day Tissaia first called her Yennefer. But now? It was different now, something more than what it used to be. Something private. Something theirs. For the first time, it felt not like a dig but an embrace.
The bliss of drifting into nothingness twisted, and suddenly, it felt like terror. The terror in Tissaia’s voice. The terror of dying in her arms. The terror of breaking her or of not breaking her at all. Her desire to live gave one final furious flare, and fate seemed hardly to notice. Sounds faded despite her grasp at them, and Tissaia’s voice bubbled and blunted and disappeared. The smear of color that had become her world went black, and Yennefer could no longer feel the heat or the cold, or the wet of Tissaia’s fingertips. She couldn’t even hear her own heartbeat anymore. It had only just been pounding in her ears, hadn’t it? She had only just been alive, been a person, been a someone.
How strange, she thought as she sank into the silent dark. To be someone at dawn and no one by nightfall.
Tissaia’s lungs had been tight since Fringilla’s insidious attack, but when she felt the last of the tension leave Yennefer’s body, she was certain they shriveled to nothing. She was sure she would never breathe again. A hideous, gut-wrenching whine pierced the burning air around them and made a fissure down her back. It became an ugly gasp as Tissaia realized the sound had come from her own throat.
“No, Yennefer. Stay awake.” She wrestled her arms around the woman’s limp body and pushed her own harsh heartbeat against the static one below. “Come on now. Wake up.” She squeezed until the muscles in her arms hurt and shook Yennefer against her.
Her throat was copper and fire as she screamed herself hoarse and demanded her due. For every century served, for every cheek turned and every war evaded, every rebellion placated. For every little girl Tissaia had molded and cared for and sacrificed for the greater good, she demanded of whatever cosmic forces existed that she have access to what was hers by right; dimeritium be damned.
“Wake up, Yennefer,” she muttered. “Wake up.” Over and over, she said it and knew it would change nothing. But then a wet cough erupted against her chest, and a shockwave of sensation ripped through Tissaia’s body. Her voice broke with a cry of relief as Yennefer tensed beneath her. Alive. She was still alive.
Tissaia eased her onto her back again and saw unfocused purple eyes blinking up at her.
“Tissaia?”
“I’m here,” she said and framed Yennefer’s face to guide her gaze. “I’m still here.”
Then she saw it, the faint shimmer in the air between them. Again, Tissaia was startled to realize it was her own doing. She could hardly feel it, the bluntest tickle against her violent grief, but yes, it was there. Against all odds, Tissaia had managed to channel Chaos along the threadbare remains of her connection to it and brought Yennefer back to life. Or stopped her just at the ledge of it. She wasn’t sure, perhaps could never know. She didn’t care. Whatever her body was doing, it was working.
“Tissaia!”
Her gaze shot to higher ground, where she saw a silhouette framed against the orange-black sky. Another appeared beside it, then another, and a delirious laugh squeaked through Tissaia’s lips. Help had arrived.
“Good,” she muttered to herself as she swayed in place. One hand slammed into the ground beside Yennefer’s head to brace herself, and her arm shook under the weight. “That’s good.” Her vision swam. “Yennefer.” She dragged in one short, painful breath, then another. “Stay alive, you wretched girl.”
Then she dropped against Yennefer’s shoulder like a fallen tree, and all the world blinked into a void.